Peter Bakowski – December 3 2017

International Day of Persons with Disabilities – December 3 2017

Peter has been writing poetry for over 30 years. His poems have appeared in literary magazines worldwide, predominantly in English but also in Arabic, German, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and French. He has lived in Melbourne and London, and travelled widely throughout Australia, Europe, North America and Africa. Peter has been an artist in residence at the University of Macau, the BR Whiting Library in Rome, the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, Soochow University, China, as well as the Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in WA, the Hobart Writer’s Cottage Tasmania, the Arthur Boyd Estate of “Bundanon” and the Broken Hill Poetry Festival, both in NSW. His other poetry books include Thunder Road, Thunder Heart; In The Human Night; The Neon Hunger; The Heart At 3am; and Days That We Couldn’t Rehearse. Known as a modern troubadour poet, Peter often travels around Australia with his family, doing readings in cities and country towns. Born in Melbourne to Polish-German immigrants, he was born premature, with a hole in the heart, and has survived two heart operations. In 1993, he survived an 8-hour heart operation that gave him an artificial mitral valve.

Beneath Our Armour
Hunter Publishers, 2009; ISBN 9780980517941
Beneath Our Armour is unique. This sequence of portrait poems covers vast tracts of history, geography, and personae in a way that is at once intimate and epic. Intimate, because Bakowski imagines his way into the lives of individuals as radically disparate as Cyril Connolly, Diego Rivera, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Smart. Epic, because he transports us from Krakow in Poland, to Old Macau, and onto Bedford Square, London and even Lower Templestowe in Melbourne – and from pitched battles to civilised dinner parties. Intense, disturbing and memorable, Beneath Our Armour is an assured and beautifully crafted new book from one of Australia’s finest contemporary poets.

Personal Weather
Hunter Publishers, 2014; ISBN 9780987580252
Personal Weather condenses biography, the history of art and literature, crime-fiction, and travellers’ tales to reveal the intimate worlds of diverse real and imagined characters glimpsed at the junction of personal and public life.
‘The pleasure of reading Bakowski. The grand themes are all here; not in capitals, but in his captured details of our intimate solitudes.’ – Alex Miller
‘Peter Bakowski has a genuine poetic gift, a sharp eye, a resonant ear, and an agile and unexpected tongue.’ – Barry Jones